There is no question more baffling than this simple, ever-recurring one: What am I? If I should decide what I am to-day, I discover that yesterday I was quite a different person. To-day I may be six feet in height, and climb the Alps; yesterday I lay helpless in swaddling clothes. Yesterday I was a thing of laughter and frolic; to-day I am grave, and brush away tears. As a babe, was I still I? What is Myself? When did I come to Myself? How far can I extend Myself? My feet are here, but in a moment my spirit can flee to Xanadu and Zanzibar. There is no spot in the universe where I may not go. Where, then, are the limits of Myself?
Personality is never for a single moment fixed: it is as changing and evanescent as a cloud. We are whirlwind spirits, swept through time and space, bearing within our souls hopes, fears, joys, sorrows, which are never twice the same. Every aspect of the universe leaves new impressions on us, and our wills, in their world-sweep, daily desire different things.
Incompleteness lies on life—restlessness is in the heart. True love has no final habitation on earth; there is no abiding-place for our deepest affection, our most tender yearning. It is curious how deeply one may love, and yet feel that there is something more. In all our journeys, skyward and sunward, we never reach the End of All.
Over against this vague and changing self, there stands out the figure of the changeless Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. In Him we find the environment of all our lives, and the sum of all our dreams.
2. Jesus calls us by our earth-born cares. In Mendelssohn's Elijah, there is a voice which sings: "O rest in the Lord!" This angel's message is the voice of Jesus to the human race.
The voice of Jesus calls us to awake to toil. We sometimes forget this, and imagine that if we follow Jesus, we shall never have anything to do. Christ does not still the machinery of the world, nor shut the mine, nor take away the sowing and the reaping. The call of Jesus is not a call to rest from work, but to rest in work. The rest we receive is that of sympathy, of inspiration, of efficiency. Christ really increases the toil-capacity of man. Man can do more work, harder work, and always better work, because of the faith that is in him. What makes the confusion and fatigue of life is, that men are everywhere scrambling for themselves, and trying to manage their own undertakings, instead of falling into harmony with God, and through Him, with all that is. What wears the soul out is not the work of life itself—it is its drudgery, its monotony, its blind vagueness, its apparent purposelessness. We do not wish to scatter our lives and spend our years in nothingness.
Christ comes into the world and says: Over-fatigue is abnormal. There is not enough work in the universe to tire every one all out. There is just enough for each one to do happily, and to do well. I am come as the great industrial organizer. My mission is not to take away toil, but to redistribute it. My industrial plan is the largest of history—it is also the most simple. I look down over the world, as a master upon his men. My work is not to found an earthly kingdom, as some have thought; it is not primarily to set up industrial establishments, or syndicates, or ways of transport and trade. My work is to build up in the universe a spiritual kingdom of energy, power, and progress. To this kingdom all material things are accessory. In My hand are all abilities, as well as all knowledge. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without My notice. Not a lily blooms without My delight. Not a brick is laid, not a stone is set, not an axe is swung, except beneath My eye. I provide for My own. To each man I assign his work, his task. If he takes upon him only what I give him to do, he will never be under-paid, or over-tired.
Hence the first step towards an industrial millennium is to arise and do what Jesus bids. Heaven is heaven because no one is unruly there, or idle, or lazy, or vicious, or morose. Each soul is at true and happy work. Each energy is absorbed; each hour is alive with interest, and there are no oppressive thoughts or ways.
If each heart and soul responded to the call of Jesus, there would be a new heaven and a new earth—a Utopia such as More never dreamed of, nor Plato, nor Bellamy, nor Campanella in his City of the Sun. Each hand would be at its own work; each eye would be upon its own task; each foot would be in the right path. All the fear, the weariness, the squalor, and the unrest of life would be done away. The life of each man would be a life of contentment, and of economic advance.
3. Jesus calls us by the scourging of our sins. Flagellation is not of the body—it is of the soul. Remorse is as a scorpion-whip, and memory beats us with many stripes. The first sin that besets us is forgetfulness of God. Apathy creeps over the spirit, and sloth winds itself about our deeds. Nothing is more pathetic than the decline of the merely forgetful soul. "Be sleepless in the things of the spirit," says Pythagoras, "for sleep in them is akin to death."